Legal Disclaimer: I own my stuff, but not the original source material. That belongs to whoever. Also, the opinions and interpretations I use here may not reflect the same in said whoever that owns the source material. Look, I'm just a poor college librarian. Suing me isn't going to get you anything but tears.

Warning: This work may be offensive to some readers. Additionally, there is anxious thoughts and Karen-typical level of racism. Feel free to back out if need be.

Author's Note: I have the image in my head that any time Harry does something to take care of his cat, he announces "Mischief managed". Also, for those of y'all who might not be familiar with the excellent work of Jackson Galaxy, a "catio" is an outdoor space like a patio that has been enclosed so that the cat can't just run loose endangering itself & local wildlife.

Submitting Info:
Stacked with: Quidditch League (Season 10); RAVEN (2023); MC4A (Sp-Y6)
Individual Challenges: Chat; Red Instead; Quaffles (Y); Polygon; Heroic Shadow; Colors of the Sky; Gryffindor MC; Ravenclaw MC; Magical MC (x2); Sandbox; Reader; Cinematic; Gamer; Dreamers (Y) (x2); Tossed Chum (Y); Ethnic & Present; Neurodivergent (x2); Rian-Russo Inversion (x3); Short Jog; Bucket Listing; Eating Cake (Y); Green Ribbon; Two Cakes (Y); Bi Bi Bi; Lovely Triangle; Ship Sails; Zukes of Hazard; Feeding; Outer; Zed Era; Rainbow Connection; Finders; Hold the Mayo
Team (Position): Wigtown Wanderers (Seeker)
Round (Prompt): Round 10-07 (Fluff; Slice of Life)
RAVEN Challenges: Settings [108](Porch); Items [60](Herbs/Spices); Colors [19](Canary)
Other MC4A Challenges: SpB [3C](Herbs/Spices); TrB [1E](Mugging the Monster); Ship (Lunar Lions)[SpMic2 (Black; Green; Pink; Wet; White)]; Chim [Oak]("Bonfire Heart" – James Blunt; University/College AU; Race Bend)
Representation(s): Desi Harry Potter/Blaise Zabini; Harry Potter/Luna Lovegood QPR; Mischief the Cat; Karen Fletchley; Chim Song Prompt
Primary & Secondary Bonus Challenges: Found Family; Nontraditional; Zucchini Bread; Machismo; Peddling Pots; Second Verse (Ladylike; Not a Lamp; Persistence Still); Chorus (Odd Feathers; Pear-Shaped; Pocky Pockets; Wabi Sabi); Demo 1 (Snow Lemon); Demo 2 (Bast's Blessing)
Tertiary & Generic Bonus Challenges: T3 (Terrarium); SN (Rail; Intercept); Once (Moses Supposes; Santa Fe; Inchworm)
Word Count: 2409 words

(^^)
Management
(^^)

Harry poured the lavender-chamomile tea from the teapot into two ceramic mugs, one canary yellow and the other a deep lilac. Both were misshaped, despite his best efforts when creating them, but honestly, that just made them more interesting to hold. He placed the canary yellow one in front of his guest, because he knew that Luna loved all things yellow even if the sundress she was wearing today was as orange as a pumpkin, while he took the lilac one for himself.

The choice to use the purple mug had nothing to do with how much he missed his husband Blaise whose eyes were the same color, regardless of the knowing look that Luna was giving him, and everything to do with how it matched the spots on the bowtie he was wearing. And if he was wearing the bowtie because he missed Blaise while he was away at a conference for the university where he taught, well, then no one had to know but him.

He had barely sat down when his cat Mischief, a longhair creamsicle tabby with black socks, came wandering in from the catio attached to the mudroom. After taking a few bites of kibble, she came to where Harry was sitting with Luna in the breakfast nook. She jumped onto the table to curl up in the sunshine streaming through the nearby window. She covered her face with the fluffy end of her tail, intent on ignoring both of them completely. The light made her pale orange fur practically glow.

Shaking his head to clear it of the distraction, Harry plucked a letter out of the napkin holder in the middle of the table. It was such a plain thing, just printed blank text on standard white paper. There were creases from where it had been carelessly shoved in between his screen door and the doorframe crisscrossing the sharper edges of the folds to make it fit in the envelope. Said envelope had no stamp or address on it, nothing that would show that it was anything official like the language within would have him believe.

Luna sipped her tea calmly with one hand scratching at the curve of Mischief's back. She was clearly trying to pretend that she hadn't noticed the letter Harry was now holding, but of course, she had. Her ignorance was as fake as the boxwood topiaries in the urns on either side of his front steps.

"Um, so," said Harry, his voice wavering as he reined in his emotional response. Luna set her mug down and folded both her hands around it as she focused her silvery-purple eyes on him. As always, being the center of someone's attention made him fidget in his seat. Swallowing his nerves, he continued speaking. "I got this letter this morning."

Luna blinked at him, not bothering to demand answers like Hermione and Ron might have in the same situation. Harry handed the letter over to her. She unfolded it as carefully as she handled copy for the Quibbler's presses. Her eyebrows crept ever higher as she read.

"This is, um, quite something," she said, her voice filled with awe. She held the paper out from her face before bringing it closer to look at something. "I do not recognize some of these words. Either my vocabulary is more limited than I had realized or whoever wrote this made them up." She looked up at Harry again. "Who is this from?"

Harry cleared his throat. "It's from a neighbor of mine. Someone who lives around here. Beyond that, I don't have a clue who it is. The neighbors I have talked to are all friendly enough, and none of them seem like they would write something so full of mistakes."

"Whoever it was, they must really feel strongly about your plants," Luna said, her voice tinged with wonder. She glanced around the many potted plants filling the kitchen with lush greenness. The inside plants were real, as were the ones that Harry had in the well-warded back garden. Even most of the beds out front had live plants in them. The only fake ones were the six topiaries lining the steps to his front porch, and that was because the wards anchored to them would kill any living plants over time.

"Yes," said Harry. He raised his mug to inhale the floral-fruity scent of it, letting the smell push away his anxiety. Even years after leaving his relatives, knowing that his neighbors were judging him had him feeling more than a little panicky. "I mean, the topiaries are fake, but apparently my neighbor thought they were real. Now they seem to be upset about that."

Luna looked at him with a dreamy smile. Her eyes had gone a bit hazy in the way that they do whenever she was seeing something beyond what everyone else could. He knew that Luna wasn't a seer, at least not the kind that predicted the future or made prophecies, but that didn't mean that she had the same perception level as the others around her. And she didn't flaunt that knowledge like Hermione did or assume that everyone would know it like Ron would. It was only one of the many things that made Harry appreciate her.

"It's wonderful, isn't it?" she said. "Someone is taking the time to notice the little things. To think that they care enough to write you a letter."

Harry hesitated, uncertain where she might be going with this line of conversation, but eventually, he nodded in agreement. His stomach twisted a bit with his nerves. He took a deep sip of his warm tea before he could make his mouth work enough to say anything.

"Yes," he said, his fingers running over the bumps of his mug in an attempt to soothe himself. "But they want me to remove the topiaries. If I don't, they're going to call the police!"

Luna's smile only grew. She looked very much the same way that Mischief did when she had successfully wrestled her stuffed carrot into the cave at the top of her favorite cat tree. The look would have been equally at home on the face of Luna's animagus form, which was a longhair like Mischief except she was white instead of an orange that was so pale it was almost white.

"Yes," she agreed readily, "I did see where they claimed that they would call the police to write a lawsuit." Luna took another sip of her tea before reaching over to pet Mischief again. The cat gave a sleepy chirp at the touch but didn't wake. "I don't even live in the muggle world, and I know that isn't something that police even do."

"But what if they try to remove the plants themself?"

"Oh," Luna said, "I hope that they do. I know that Blaise made the anti-theft wards give would-be thieves an extra stingy shock. Of course, I also know that he had the twins in mind when he was working up the array, but I helped with the parts that differentiate between magical and nonmagical targets. If your neighbor tries to steal your ward anchors, then you should be safe, both from losing them and from accidentally using undeniably obvious magic on a muggle."

"But they wouldn't really try to steal my plants, right?" Harry asked. He was still rubbing his fingers over the irregular surface of his mug. "I mean, surely no one would be that stupid, right?"

"Harry," Luna said with a voice as flat as a pancake, "you do remember the sort of people we went to school with, don't you?"

He sighed and nodded, because he really did.

(^^)

Harry was walking Mischief around the neighborhood when he felt the alarm wards on his house go off. It wasn't a magical attack nor was anyone trying to actually pass through the boundary wards. So he didn't urge Mischief to go any faster than her leisurely pace. Not that he would have been able to in the first place, short of just picking her up and carrying her.

Taking a cat for a walk was just not as simple as taking a dog was.

Fortunately, they had been just around the corner from the house at the time. Unfortunately, this meant that the would-be thief was still fighting to yank the fake boxwood out of its urn when Harry and Mischief arrived on their front walk.

Harry watched the woman bemusedly for longer than was probably appropriate. He didn't immediately recognize her, so she was obviously not one of the neighbors who had greeted him and Blaise when they had moved into their house. Most of the street's residents had come by that first fortnight. The whole chaotic affair had been far more welcoming than anything he would have expected from Privet Drive.

This woman reminded Harry of Aunt Petunia. She was bony in the same unnatural way that was a byproduct of jumping between fad diets. She also dressed in the same combination of sweater set and pencil skirt (both in a pastel peach that made the woman look washed out) that Aunt Petunia had always favored. Her hair was just as blond as Aunt Petunia's, but instead of being natural, it was obviously bleached. The bleaching was probably done in the same beauty salon as the choppy and lopsided haircut had been.

(Harry truly didn't understand why that particular hairstyle had gotten so popular, especially with white women in their thirties and forties.)

Impatient now that she was back within sight of her domain, Mischief meowed loudly at the stranger on her porch. The woman whipped around to face them so fast that she fell on her bottom. Careful not to tug on Mischief's leash, Harry crossed his arms.

"Just what do you think you're doing?" Harry demanded, pushing down the anxious roiling in his stomach. It would be so much easier if this woman was a Death Eater. At least then the consequences would be just life or death and not social exile. The woman's pale face flushed an unbecoming shade of pink at being caught in the act.

"You were warned," the woman claimed. Huffing and puffing like she was a dragon, she got back to her feet. Because nothing in Harry's life was fair, she was head and shoulders taller than him. "You were given two days to remove these horrid things. It has now been a full week!"

"It has," Harry agreed, realizing then that this woman must be the mysterious letter-writer. "Who are you, by the way? Your letter didn't say why you think you have the authority to order me to do anything."

"I am Karen Fletchley," the woman said, straightening her back and puffing up her chest like a bird trying to make herself look bigger and more important. "I am a resident of this neighborhood! Your low-class fake plants go against my legal right to protect the property values of everyone here!"

"Is there a homeowners' association for the neighborhood that I was not aware of?" Harry asked, despite already knowing the answer. Both Hermione and Blaise had agreed that homeowners' associations were things that had to be avoided when buying property in the muggle world. When those two agreed on something, it could only be the truth, because they agreed on less topics than Hermione and Luna did.

"No," Karen snapped. The pink on her face had graduated to a dull red. "That doesn't change the fact that your fake plants need to be removed! Do I need to speak slower for you to understand me?" She affected the exaggerated enunciation that people did when they thought Harry didn't speak English because of his Indian heritage. "Fake plants are trash. You need to throw them away."

"Please leave my property," Harry said, rolling his eyes at the bigoted woman. Mischief meowed loudly in agreement. Karen's blue eyes flicked down to the feline, her lips twisting in a sneer.

"Why do you have that poor cat on a leash?" Karen demanded as if she hadn't heard Harry's order. She marched towards him. Her hand was outstretched as if she intended to snatch the leash from his hand. "Cats don't need to be leashed like dogs, you stupid—"

"I wouldn't finish that sentence if I were you," Harry said, his voice as hard and cold as ice. No one threatened the ones he loved, no matter if that loved one was just an animal. He certainly wasn't going to get into the nuances of cat husbandry with this random stranger who had already proven herself willfully ignorant on multiple topics. "Just leave my property already. You are not welcomed, and you do not have any business staying."

"I still need to confiscate this garbage—"

"You have no authority to confiscate anything." Harry raised his chin defiantly. This woman had nothing on the horrible cruelty of Snape or Umbridge, even if she was attempting to cast herself in the same role. "I will not remove any of my plants, real or fake, but I have no problem calling the authorities to remove you if you don't do it yourself immediately."

"Well, I've never—"

"Been kicked off of someone's property before?" Harry interrupted. He rolled his eyes hard enough that they ached a bit afterwards. "That's absolutely shocking. With the low-class way you've been acting, I would have expected you to be used to it."

"How dare you—"

"Quite easily," Harry interrupted again. He gave his best mimicry of the twins' grin. "Some might even claim that I am insolent to my very core and that I inherited it from my father. I don't normally give those claims any credit, but if it gets you off my property, I will."

"I should have known that your kind," Karen spat as she stomped past them (thankfully, Mischief only hissed and didn't swap at the foul woman), "wouldn't understand the importance of appearances."

Harry decided not to ask what Karen had meant by that. It could have been any number of things from his ethnicity to his queerness. It was just better for his peace of mind to ignore the comment just like he did any time he got dragged into the Ministry and had to deal with Umbridge's little comments.

Still, Harry got the feeling that he wasn't seeing the last of Karen Fletchley.

Mischief was definitely easier to manage.